Why Do Sex Scandals Destroy Democrats But Not Republicans?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/sex/155461/why_do_sex_scandals_destroy_democrats_but_not_republicans/

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Does no one else find the very fact of John Edwards being on trial curious? Does no one else wonder about the criminal basis for the prosecution? About who in politics does and does not end up being destroyed by matters related to sexual behavior?

Let me preface my take on the Edwards trial with one general observation: Not all politicians are created equal. And not all are treated equally. Therein lies an issue deserving a much, much closer look: whether vulnerable Democrats, chiefly of the liberal persuasion, are targeted for destruction. Or at least helped along to their doom by a double standard.

***

But first, the specifics of the Edwards case. He faces a potential $1.5 million fine, but, far more seriously, up to thirty years imprisonment. Thirty years. His crime? Not murder, not torture, not armed robbery, not stealing money from clients. No, his crime was his failure to report campaign contributions. While preparing for his second presidential bid, in 2006, he got caught up in an extramarital affair that produced a child. And, not exactly able to announce that fact or ask his sick wife to sign off, the wealthy Edwards turned to some wealthy backers to take care of the woman and the baby and hide the whole thing from Elizabeth Edwards and presumably everyone else. Two people gave him a total of $900,000.

When someone running for office receives money, or the benefit of money or services, that’s a contribution, and it must both be reported and be subject to restrictions on amount. Unless of course it has nothing to do with the campaign itself. Certainly, candidates receive ordinary income (such as fees for lawyering) that is not subject to those limits. And if someone gives a candidate a gift that is not used for the campaign, it is similarly not subject to campaign finance laws.

[pinboy3niner]

1. Magic underwear?

You got me. I can't exlain it.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

29. magic daipers

.....*coff* Vitter *ahem*......

[Scuba]

2. They own the major media. We don't.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

30. I believe you are on to something there.

something I've been angry about for years

[Rhiannon12866]

3. Good question!

Larry Craig, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, to name a few recent ones. None of them even resigned.

[karynnj]

51. ALL of them opted not to stand for reelection - pushed by the party to make that decision

The fact is that HAD Edwards been in any office in 2008, when the scandal surfaced, he would likely have done the same thing - unless he was so delusional that he thought he could win re-election.

The fact is that by the time the scandal surfaced, Edwards had no immediate likelihood of getting any office. It was clear that he could no longer win in NC for any state wide office. It was also clear that even if McCain won, Edwards would not be a serious candidate after winning just one primary in two election years. Sanford, on the other hand had an excellent chance in the Republican party.

[cali]

4. This is a pretty lousy article

the author doesn't even attempt to answer his own question. The article has nothing whatsoever to do with the question in the title and the arguments he gives for Edwards, truly suck.

[jp11]

8. It suggests the media is to blame.

As well as making the case that there may be a larger conspiracy by the interests that the people ruined by scandals were against, tin foil hat yes but it is the writer's answer.

[leveymg]

31. I don't think you even read it. This isn't just about Edwards, it's about the disparate treatment

Last edited Mon May 21, 2012, 10:26 AM - Edit history (1)

shown liberal Democrats, and their pummeling in the mass media and shunning by Party Leadership -- Weiner, Spitzer, Hart -- as contrasted to the circle-your-wagons protection and high survival rate enjoyed by GOP who have been similarly caught with their pants down. Baker is pointing out that difference in outcomes, and it's a valid point that bears more discussion and investigation.

[justiceischeap]

5. I think because Dems have standards and repubs don't?

Also, it's not as common among Dems as it is among Repubs. Oh, and they own the media too.

[Shadowflash]

32. This is it.

Despite all their crowing about 'family values' and 'personal responsibility' the Republicans don't care if their members act unethically and circle the wagons no matter what the issue is.

The Democrats, on the other hand, will work to keep their name free of this type of stuff and, when something like this comes up, they are the first to condemn it as wrong.

It's just a matter of standards and principles and another difference between the parties.

[loyalsister]

42. Exactly

They look the other way when their David Vitters, etc. get caught.

[kickysnana]

6. Scandal now in the courts took out the state GOP House Speaker a woman

Just this week the Ron Paul Sig Heil Camp completed a coup over the MIchele Bachmann Evangelical-Bat- Shit-Crazy Camp Camp leaving TPaw and his Old-Guard-Right-Wing Republicans as the now Old-Guard-Right-Wing-usta-be-Republican. (They are still in shock but some are Ind) Our moderate-rustabe Republicans ie Gov Carlson have already joined the DFL and the old-progressive DFLers (Wellstone, Humphrey, Mondale) are either Green, moved out of the country or hunkering down for the bad times. (We just stick around DU for the Headlines and News of the Weird.) BTW The die hard libertarians were put in a ghetto here because even thought Minnesotan's are no longer nice we are supposed to still look nice and libertarians cannot do that.



(Warning: The above may have been written under a boatload of painkillers this morning. An auto-immune attack is underway here.)

[alfredo]

12. Crohn's, Colitis, or Budweiser?

[librechik]

48. crickets

Nothing more boring or uninteresting to the "liberal" press than a GOP scandal. Nothing to look at there!

[Motown_Johnny]

7. We have the courage of our convictions, they don't

Of course there is a double standard.

[FarPoint]

9. We Democrats are not aligned with the religious right zelots...

The religious right can choose to be forgiving of their own...double standards you see...

Additionally, we also are not as financially wealthy as the GOP...

[get the red out]

27. +1

That's the major point, all a Republican has to do is say he is sorry for his sin. Democrats aren't alligned with the modern day "Pardoners".

[Zalatix]

10. A small scandal hit Mark Foley and cost the GOP Congress in 2006.

Then there was Larry Craig, and Newt Gingrich has been dogged for ages with his scandals.

And then there was U.S. Senator Bob Packwood.

Enjoy!!

[jp11]

11. The media won't go after republicans the same way they go after democrats.

The are directed not to, fear the conservative victim mentality whenever you say bad things about them, etc.

Then many democrats in my opinion are more than happy to through people under the bus at the drop of a hat to not deal with any distractions to being elected, winning, or trying (poorly) to combat the conservative narrative that is just about everywhere in our media. Some may even take a holier than thou POV to any misconduct which is pretty funny since the democratic party isn't the one favored by the religious groups.

Republicans running on the family values ticket and pushing morality through religion etc which almost never includes the 'true' good morality of Jesus ie taking care of the poor, sick, the golden rule, etc are far from that. Republican voters back hate filled judgemental candidates and support their party that pushes legislation that hurts the largest number of people and those least able to bear that burden while helping the minority rich at nearly every turn. As for scandals they yell loud at any criticism from the media of sex scandals about the media bias and the media cowers if they even covered the issue. Their voters don't care if their people are flawed even to an extreme hell why would they when they elect people who work against their very own interests?

Too many democrats seem to expect democratic/progressive/liberal politicians to be perfect super heroes and won't forgive them any misstep, mistake, blunder. A large part of that is the unfair and disproportionate coverage democratic scandals/mistakes get compared to republicans but it still takes the public to agree and not 'forgive' the people involved to ruin them. It certainly doesn't help those in trouble to have members of their own party tossing them under the bus, often because standing up for them makes them a target for the unfair conservative narrative of the democrats screwing up, being immoral, untrustworthy, etc.

[Cosmocat]

16. YEP

All true!

[SDjack]

13. John made the mistake of not stealing enough. The CEOs and Banksters stole

trillions and spent their evenings with their expensive prostitutes. John should have stolen and partied with them. None of them has a criminal charge.

[liberal N proud]

14. Democrats don't see it as something the country should be wasting their time on.

And republicans don't tolerate it when Democrats are naughty and would rather spend time attacking Democrats who have done the same things they have instead of focusing on the real issues at hand.

[Cosmocat]

15. Two words - JOHN ENSIGN

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/13/john-ensign-sex-scandal-report-12-juiciest-bits.html

Edwards has NOTHING on this clown.

Yeah, SOME Rs go down, and SOME Ds managed to skate.

But, it is like anything else. Ds get hammered on it a LOT more than Rs do, and Rs skate a LOT more than Ds do.

What is galling to any democrat is how the Rs righteously scream about how they are the party of values, but it is not even CLOSE how many sex/infidelity scandals the Rs see than the Ds do.

Again, though, it is like anything else, a D can be destroyed by a "scream" or have spend over a month being grilled for not wearing a flag lapel pin during a presidential campaign, Mitt Romney can flat out lie every time he opens his mouth and it is just Mitt being Mitt.

[JFN1]

17. Simple.

Because Republicans have no shame whatsoever.

[bonniebgood]

18. You don't see that other John on

trial in NV. John Ensign is not on trial his mother paid off his mistress and whole family.
Dems won't support their own. Ed Shultz almost single handily took out congress Weiner.
An old lady told me years ago that it was a condition of the sixties (President Johnson losing the south) when the south went republican that if you were a democrat or liberal you were called a ni***r lover. Which is the reason why dems won't stand with dems or just outright throw them under the bus. Dems don't even know why or won't admit it.
Dems has to throw other dems under the bus to keep power and the media off their ass and repukes support, distract, both sides do it bs because all they care about is power and they know the media will support them.
Again i ask, where is the john ensign trial for using campaign money for his mistress? Even Rachael has not mention Ensign during Edwards trial. Her repuke bosses won't allow it.
I will answer the question Rachael has asked: Why the GOP war on women so fierce NOW? The GOP war is on white women to not have abortions. They see the numbers. More minorities babies was born than white this year. Therefore, in 18 years repukes will be out numbered therefore out voted. Post my reply mistakes and all i have to go to work.

[JHB]

19. Lack of a smear-machine and MSM following along with...

...the talking points put out by the conservative machine because "it's in the news".

Conservatives deliberately put a spotlight on these with the intent to cripple people politically, whereas there there is no counterpart by Democrats to systematically push Republican sex scandals in the media.

And as for why Edwards is facing prosecution now, look to the political ambitions of the people who started the case.

[unblock]

20. because scandalized republicans can still create tax loopholes for donors.

republicans are best thought of as employees of corporations, and as long as corporations find them profitable, they keep them around. especially given that firing a republican often means hiring a democrat, or at best, hiring a neophyte, weak republican, corporations will invariably take the view that the most profitable action would be to pour more money into supporting the scandalized republican to diffuse and confuse the situation.


but who's going to back a scandalized democrat like that way? the big money dries up real fast, and then there goes the public support.


in short, democrats need to be either saintly or a kennedy. otherwise, scandals are poltiically deadly.
republicans need to be greedy, selfish, corrupt bastards. scandals are largely irrelevant, or if anything, evidence that they are indeed greedy, selfish, corrupt bastards -- so what's the problem?

[KharmaTrain]

21. Ask Mark Foley About That...

Firstly, rushpublicans didn't destroy John Edwards...his own arrogance did. Whether what he did was legal or not we'll find out very soon from a jury looking at the facts of the case...not political spin or personal opinions. Bottom line is Edwards knew that having an affair that was discovered would ruin his career...he played with fire and not only burned himself but ruined his family in the process.

Let's not play the false equivelency game...anyone remember Mark Foley? The rushpublican congresscritter who was texting his boyfriends from the House floor and messed around with House pages? Not only did his stupidity cost him his House seat and the rushpublicans the House but he ended up doing time in the slammer. Stupidity and arrogance are non-partisan...

[Mc Mike]

22. Ooh! I know the answer to this one!

It's because the Dem party runs largely on issues of 'morality' and 'family values', and always courts the ultra-far-right puritan crowd for...

Sorry. I got confused for a minute there. Nevermind.

[Ship of Fools]

23. According to my husband:

Evangelicals, obviously controlling Rs, believe that if you have
faith, you can fk up all you want to. The Gawds forgive all.

[Ship of Fools]

24. Oops -- but only if you are an R --

because The Gawds have already determined the Ds to be
demons, etc. His take on it is a little more complicated than
that, but that's my understanding of his understanding. He was
also born/raised in middle Kansas among these folks.

I talked him out of it, however.

[TBF]

25. It wasn't the sex it was the money -

repubs seem to be much better at stealing than dems.

[KurtNYC]

26. GOP careers destroyed by sex scandals: John Ensign(R), Bob Livingston (R),

Chris Lee (R)
Mark Souder (R)
Mark Sanford
Larry Craig (R)
David Vitter (R)
Mark Foley (R)
jack Ryan (R)
Bob Packwood (R)
Daniel Crane (R)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/sex-scandal-timeline/index.html

[xchrom]

28. what's david vitter doing today?

what's the size of his paycheck?

[KurtNYC]

37. my own theory is that they have something on every congress person

and they use it for blackmail and control. It's the same thinking and tactics that created Abu Ghraib -- the pictures were for blackmail and control. Strauss Kahn is the same. Jeff Gannon.

They use sex because it works. They use television because it has worked in the past.

What Vitter is doing today is espouse and champion RW policies. If he stops they'll print the pictures (or whatever).

The people who go down are the ones who won't play ball -- Spitzer and Weiner -- but they have something on all of them. It is a pre-condition of employment. The leaked internal memos from that security firm talked about how to control people in these types of positions, specifically 1) financiallyl 2) emotionally 3) sexually.

[Mc Mike]

60. +1. Sanford, Ensign, and Craig toughed it out, too. NT.

[leveymg]

34. Livingston and most of the other GOP members of his committee went down because of bribery scandals

Please, see, http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/01/randy-duke-cunningham-was-alwa.php

[WillParkinson]

33. Because Republicans, in general, get so little sex...

They like to cheer on those who got it.

[Bluenorthwest]

35. See, the part about the 900K 'gift' and the lies to the public and to supporters

make calling Edward's problems a 'sex scandal' a generous bit of spin. Let's not forget that John traveled the country lying to his supporters, that he went out of his way to include in his affair era speeches lots of material on his traditional view of marriage and how his Baptist roots are 'just a part of me' and of course, how he had to oppose marriage equality because marriage is a Sacrament, between ONE man and ONE woman. So he slandered me, my family and the entire gay community as unworthy and amoral, compared to himself and his own. This man lied to me personally. He had an aid call me at home to tell the lie again. He USED good people, voters, as his own personal smokescreen. 'Look at the amoral gays! I am traditional! One woman for me'.
No one made him do that. He did it for his own advancement.
Those who want to pretend this is 'about who he fucks' are making a disgusting argument, considering the anti gay platform he preached and I do mean preached. He railed against us, now his defenders try to act like free love proponents, as if John was a symbol of equality and freedom, when he is the anti gay son of a Baptist, in breach of his own stated ethics.

[Nye Bevan]

36. Yes. It sucks that Mark Foley will most likely be President one day (nt)

[Octafish]

40. You think? Maybe David Vitter can be his veep?

The press will certainly Pamper them.

[sabrina 1]

49. Lol, well said. But not only that, HIS PARTY will protect him.

Democrats throw their own to the wolves, while Republicans, no matter what else can be said of them, will protect their own. Democrats worry 'what will the Right think of us'. Republicans have no such concerns about the 'left'. So Vitter who broke the law, remains in good standing with his party and the public, because of that, isn't bothered nor is the media, with his double standards and actual violations of the law.

[karynnj]

52. "throw their own to the wolves"

That is pretty flamboyant language - especially in Edwards case. How - and why - could the Democrats protect him? He will be found guilty or not guilty by the jury. That is our legal system. Most pundits are suggesting he will be acquitted. That might be for the best as the sentences seem far to extreme for what he allegedly did.

[sabrina 1]

55. I'm not speaking only of Edwards. What about Ron Siegelman, Anthony Weiner?

Weiner's own constituency did not want him ousted. And we lost that seat to a Republican after the Dem leadership, NOT the Republicans, publicly asked him, despite the wishes of his own constituency, to step down. For cyber sex! He didn't break any laws. And Siegelman, that is a political prosecution if ever there was one, but I have yet to see, what we would most definitely have seen had he been a Republican, any Democrat accuse Rove et al of conducting a witch hunt against him.

But War Criminals and Economic Criminals are given a pass, we are supposed to 'look forward' when it comes to actual crimes.

[karynnj]

56. Siegleman really is political prosecution

Weiner should have been allowed to keep his seat - and, in fact, he did not have to resign, The fact is that the party really had little leverage - as they had no intention of supporting him in the future.

[Octafish]

53. Murder they allow.

Know your BFEE: David Vitter was pampered by the DC Madam



Sorry to repost what I know for you is old news, sabrina 1. It's just that I hate what these traitors and gangsters have done to the United States of America. Thanks to Corporate McPravda, too few outside DU know to what extent.

[Mc Mike]

59. Takes me back to Meese, Al 'the Drooler' Bloomingdale, and the Vicki Morgan murder. NT.

[lumberjack_jeff]

38. A couple of reasons.

1) Republicans think that all other people are pigs. When their pig shows his stripes? "Oh well, he's still against abortion and the gays, right? I'm sure Jeebus forgives him."
2) Democrats support comes disproportionately from women, of whom, hell hath no fury greater than.

Edwards who? Why are we talking about him? I think there's a middle road between the Republican denial and Democratic bonfires. Let it sink.

[treestar]

39. Because Democrats are reluctant to use them against the other side

Often even here on DU you'll see "what business is it of ours" "who cares about his sex life" and so on, but the Republicans show no such mercy.

[pnwmom]

41. Because they get extra points for hypocrisy.

[Arugula Latte]

43. What Edwards did was far more serious than anything Bush did.

He, uh, did something bad with a bit of campaign money. Bush only willfully slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent people so the U.S. corporations who donate to Republicans could make more money.

[Octafish]

44. Why even bring that up?

The fact the Empire is NAZI is taboo.

[Rex]

45. Because we expect GOPukers to lie, cheat and steal.

SO when they get caught, we go 'yep there they go again'. OTOH, we expect our Democratic leaders to be of finer cloth and are surprised when they do not turn out to be.

[LibDemAlways]

46. Because Repukes have a vested interest in seeing

Dems go down, so they never let up and won't let Dem scandals go away. They are relentless, like sharks smelling blood in the water and moving in for the kill. When it's one of their own, they gladly accept the tearful on-camera apology and then move on. Dems aid and abet by not adhering to the same policy.

[libodem]

47. Pubs neber admit to any wrong doing

They just keep on lying and then convict the accusers. They have no shame, project shamelessness, and blame the 'liberal media'. They pretend innocence and call accusations, conspiracy theories because no one could possibly stomp in a bathroom stall to initiate homosexual sexual contacts. Many in Idaho still believe Larry Craig was framed.

[stevenleser]

50. To the naysayers here, one only has to rephrase it this way...

Which high profile Democrats besides President Clinton can you name that survived a sex scandal?

Now do the same thing with the other side.

When you realize that there are at least a half dozen to a dozen high profile republicans that come to mind immediately who have survived them, and perhaps one Democrat, that tells the story right there.

[LadyHawkAZ]

54. Because

we will turn on our own for it. We haven't progressed past "Sex is icky", and we haven't outgrown a love for drama. Even if we are progressives.

Republicans will do a public scold, but will mostly still get behind one of their own, as long as they cheated with the opposite sex like Gawd intended.

[sadbear]

57. Has anyone mentioned Larry Craig yet?

Of course his scandal involved another dude. That makes a difference to republicans.

[LibDemAlways]

58. He announced he was going to resign and then took it back and

stayed in office through the end of his term. A Dem would have been hounded out immediately.